NB: THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND
NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT: BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS-
HEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL
SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY.
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PANORAMA
"Economy Class Syndrome"
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 10.06.01
........................................................................
ANDY DAVIES: Every year hundreds of people in this country may be dying unnecessarily after long haul
flights. But how long have the airlines known there could be a problem, and why is the public only finding
out about it now? And how did the death of one young woman finally force the airlines to come clean?
MRS CHRISTOFFERSEN: If she hadn't have got on that aeroplane she would be with us today.
DAVIES: Emma Christoffersen, 28 years old, fit and healthy and on the holiday of a lifetime. But only
days later she was dead, and the world was finally learning the truth about economy class syndrome. Eight
months ago Emma, from South Wales, was on holiday in Australia with her best friend.
RHIAN BEVAN
Both Emma and myself loved travelling and the opportunity came up to see Australia, so it's a chance that
couldn't be missed, the chance to have some action and adventure and see some sights.
TIM STUART
FiancÚ
Well they were just having fun basically. I mean they were two young girls out there for a three week
holiday and they decided to pack in as much as they possibly could over the three weeks.
DAVIES: But the holiday was to end tragically within 24 hours of Emma and Rhian boarding their flight
back to the UK.
RHIAN: Emma slept most of the way and then about half way home she said that she had a rash at the
bottom of her leg and it was sort of irritating. She stayed in her seat for the rest of the journey because there
were people either side of us who were also sleeping and you didn't really want to disturb them. So we
touched down at Heathrow. Emma got a bit breathless and started to lag behind.
[Reconstruction]
RHIAN: Emma just stopped. She just slumped against the window of the building and slowly just
collapsed to the floor and appeared to have a kind of fit. Within a couple of minutes the paramedics were
there. I think they gave her some oxygen but she was still struggling to breathe and still was complaining
that it hurt and that she was scared and it was cold.
[Reconstruction]
DAVIES: Emma had suffered a massive pulmonary embolism. A blood clot had attached itself to her lung
and was suffocating her. There is a tunnel beneath Heathrow's runways which gives the airports'
paramedics direct access to the nearest hospital. Nearly every month they make this same journey with
passengers like Emma.
JOHN BELSTEAD
A&E Consultant, Ashford Hospital
People get off the plane, they start walking through the terminal building, they collapse. The local staff
start to resuscitate them. The ambulance crew continue the resuscitation. They're brought in here. We
continue resuscitation and then we certify them dead.
[Reconstruction]
BELSTEAD: In reality most of them have such a big clot blocking the blood vessels to their lungs that they
cannot survive from the moment they collapse.
RHIAN: The ambulance driver turned to me and said that it's not looking good. "This is very serious. I
don't mean to worry you but it's really very serious."
[Reconstruction]
DAVIES: Within minutes they were at Ashford Hospital. Emma was rushed in to the resuscitation room
but she was already dead.
RUTH CHRISTOFFERSEN
Mother
We assumed that it was a heart attack. We couldn't envisage it being anything else, and the sister on duty
told us that we couldn't quote her but she said they're 99% sure that it was a DVT.
JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN
Father
We said DVT, what's that? She said "Well deep vein thrombosis caused by a long haul flight.".
BBC NEWS
A woman from South Wales has died after sitting in a cramped plane seat on a long haul flight from
Australia.
Emma Christoffersen, who was 28 and from Newport in South Wales, is believed to be unusually young to
be a victim of what's known as deep vein thrombosis.
DAVIES: Emma's death was a turning point that someone so young could die so suddenly raised too many
questions. Now, finally, the world was to wake up to the dangers of deep vein thrombosis. Deep vein
thrombosis, or DVT, can happen when people simply sit still for too long, for instance on a long haul flight.
The blood thickens in the legs and produces a clot. If the clot grows it can block the vein and cause pain
and swelling. This is a blood clot. If it breaks off from the leg and travels to the lungs it can kill you. This
is called pulmonary embolism.
ANDY DAVIES
The DVT which caused Emma Christoffersen's death almost certainly occurred during her long haul flight.
Her death made headline news because it appeared to be such a unique case. But it soon became clear that
it wasn't just a one off. At one hospital near Heathrow 30 fatal DVT cases were brought in from the airport
in just three years.
BELSTEAD: Since Emma Christoffersen died we've continued to have people coming in who have died
after long haul flights, and in fact only this morning I've received a post-mortem report on somebody who
had died as a result of a long haul flight.
[Reconstruction]
DAVIES: No-one knows exactly how many people are affected by this. The blood clot can often lie
undetected for weeks, and the connection to a flight can easily be missed, so even medics are unsure just
how big a problem this is.
BELSTEAD: We're seeing here at Ashford the people who do actually die getting off the plane at
Heathrow. We don't know how many other people go on to develop pulmonary embolism or to have a deep
vein thrombosis diagnosed because they will scatter all over the country afterwards and that is a very
difficult figure to get a handle on. It may be ten times the number, it could be a hundred times the number.
DAVIES: Many more people get DVT than die from it. The latest figures suggest as many as one in ten
long haul passengers may develop blood clots. Most clots will clear up by themselves and not even show
symptoms. But if they do, the patient could end up here at the Lister Hospital in London being treated by
John Scurr, one of the world's leading experts on DVT.
JOHN SCURR: When you're standing still there's no flow, and that's exactly what happens in an aeroplane,
there's no flow through these veins and that's why the blood sets.
DAVIES: John Scurr is in no doubt that a large number of people in this country alone have died from the
condition each year.
JOHN SCURR
Consultant Surgeon, Middlesex & Lister Hospitals
There are no accurate figures telling us how many people die from flight related blood clots, but I would
estimate that it's certainly in excess of a few hundred and possibly up to as many as a thousand people a
year, and that's based on our experience from hospitals in close proximity to airports.
DAVIES: But if so many people have been dying from flight related DVT each year, why did it take until
the death of Emma Christoffersen for the public to find out about it? And what about the air lines?
Because the question on the minds of all those who've lost someone to post-flight DVT is this - just how
long have the airlines known about it?
JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN: Why didn't they let people know? How many years have they sat back and
hidden it?
DAVIES: London 60 years ago, the blitz. As huge areas of the capital were being reduced to rubble,
thousands of Londoners took shelter in the underground. Suddenly there was a dramatic rise in the number
of people dying from blood clots - six times the usual number in fact, and nearly all, it was discovered,
involved people who'd spent the night in shelters sitting in chairs. It was the first compelling evidence that
prolonged immobility can cause deep vein thrombosis, and it wasn't long afterwards that DVT was first
linked to flying. It happened in the 1950s, soon after the launch of the Comet and the birth of commercial
jet air travel. In fact, it's now almost half a century since the link was first uncovered. An article in this
medical journal from 1954 suggests that prolonged dependency stasis - that's sitting still - is a state imposed
by airplane flights and is able, unpredictably, to bring on thrombosis. But if the first warning had come in
the age of the Comet all those years ago, then one of the loudest warnings was to follow in the age of the
Jumbo Jet. In 1968 the revolutionary Boeing 747 was unveiled to the world, a Jumbo Jet capable of
carrying over 350 passengers.
[Natural Sync
The Jumbo Jet age begins, the second jet revolution. The handouts talk of unmatched spaciousness.
Privately every airline admits it will fill them choc full as soon as it can.
DAVIES: But that same year a senior registrar at a hospital near Heathrow began to suspect that long
distance flights provided an ideal climate for causing blood clots.
Professor PETER BEIGHTON
When we sat down to think about it, it dawned on us that the two major risks were low oxygen tension, in
other words lack of oxygen in the blood associated with high altitude on the one hand, and stasis,
immobility, sitting still for long periods of time on the other, and those two risks add up to deep vein
thrombosis.
DAVIES: Beighton conducted his research in 1968. He published his findings in the British Heart Journal
and brought the issue directly to the attention of the airlines. And there's one very good reason why they
should have taken note of his research. The man who did the research with Beighton and co-authored the
findings was working at the time for BOAC, one of Britain's biggest commercial airlines. In the late 1960s
Peter Richards worked for BOAC as a medical officer, but he soon found himself out of synch with what he
saw as their commercial approach to passenger health.
Dr PETER RICHARDS
The attitude I think which was really defined by the marketing division of the company was that flying was
luxurious, it was safe, there were no hazards.. or health hazards in flying. It was a wonderful way to go
round the world, and if there were any health hazards, they certainly didn't want to publish them.
DAVIES: Two years after raising the issue of DVT and increasingly frustrated at the company's attitude,
Richards left BOAC.
Do you think in 1968 when you did this paper with Peter Beighton, do you think that people at that time
were dying from flight related DVT?
RICHARDS: Yes, yes I do. I'm quite sure there were.
DAVIES: By the 1970s deep vein thrombosis was still a non-issue for the airline industry. All the
warnings about immobility were simply ignored as the airlines competed to pack their new long haul jets
with passengers. By 1977 the condition had a name, it had been dubbed 'economy class syndrome'. We've
tracked down fifteen more articles from the next decade which looked at whether flying could cause DVT.
They were unanimous. All agreed that it could, but it didn't stop there. Many of them suggested that
passengers should actually be told of the dangers. For instance, from this article: "Advice to passengers to
drink plenty of fluids and to keep their feet and legs moving should be given by the hostess." There's
another one: "Walks along the seat aisle should be encouraged as well as active limb movements from time
to time while seated." But still the passengers weren't told of any of the dangers and people continued to
die as a result. One of the clearest warnings from the 80s came from someone with firsthand experience of
the pernicious effects of DVT, and he had one other qualification - he was a doctor.
Dr JOHN CRUICKSHANK
I was doing a tremendous amount of travelling all around the world to places like Australia, Japan,
America, and it was on one such trip to the Far East which included Japan where because I was away for
four weeks I took my family and went economy class.
DAVIES: John Cruickshank fell ill soon after the flight. It was five weeks before his condition was finally
diagnosed. He'd developed a pulmonary embolism, the most dangerous consequence of DVT.
CRUICKSHANK: When I came out of hospital, obviously I was quite relieved that I had survived, and
then when I was talking to colleagues, within a day or two I was quite struck by the fact that it had either,
number one, happened to them, or they had close friends and contacts whom it had happened to.
DAVIES: So concerned was Cruickshank that he wrote up his experience in a medical journal in 1988.
More significantly he also approached a major airline.
CRUICKSHANK: ... and described the problem I'd had and the paper I'd just written, and I even offered to
help them, if they felt it was appropriate, to actually do a little video, not to alarm passengers but to gently
inform them on sensible things to do within the aircraft to protect them from problems. I got a reply from
the airlines indicating that it really was none of their business and they didn't really want to know.
DAVIES: What was their business at this stage involved packing as many passengers into their planes as
possible. Conditions in economy class, already cramped, were made worse on some airlines as extra seats
were squeezed in. But still there was no mention of deep vein thrombosis, and no advice on how to prevent
it. Last month the airlines medical directors were at their annual convention in Reno near Las Vegas in the
rigorous scientific setting of a casino hotel in the American desert. These people don't like discussing DVT
in public. When they do, it's often to cast doubt on the basic link with sitting still for too long, even though
that connection was first noticed as far back as 1940 in the days of the blitz.
Dr JOHN MERRITT
President, Medical Directors Association
If you look back at the research there have been pointers to immobility being a cause of DVT. But I have
yet to see a significant study that inconclusively says that is the case.
Dr ALISTAIR BEATTON
Medical Director, Emirates
Sitting doing nothing is not good for you, so my advice would be first and foremost make sure that you take
some exercise.
DAVIES: This is because of the DVT issue.
BEATTON: Not necessarily. We haven't linked immobility and DVT together - alright?
DAVIES: I thought that was linked in 1940.
BEATTON: No, it is a... there is a causation and there is an association, but there is no definite link.
Alright?
DAVIES: But for many medics the evidence for that link between DVT and immobility is just so
overwhelming it cannot be ignored.
BELSTEAD: I've known definitely about the association.. oh for 20 years or more. In previous posts I was
working in orthopaedic surgery and one of the influences that made us work towards getting people up and
getting them moving quicker after surgery than we used to was the fact that people were developing DVTs
and pulmonary embolisms.
DAVIES: Now at last one airline has finally admitted to Panorama that it knew there was a problem with
deep vein thrombosis nearly ten years ago.
Dr DAVID FLOWER
Occupational Physician, British Airways
What 's very important is to accept that there is a probable association which we did in the early 1990s, long
before the more recent papers of 1998/9 and the year 2000 came out.
DAVIES: So you're fairly certain in the early 1990s that there was a link between DVT and aircraft
conditions?
FLOWER: And prolonged immobility of which long haul air travel is a cause, yes.
British Airways advert
From the airline that cares about everyone that flies - British Airways.
DAVIES: British Airways now claims it has actually been warning passengers about the danger of DVT for
nearly ten years. Take a look, they say, at their in-flight well-being literature which has been handed out to
passengers since 1993. But although they advise passengers to exercise, there is no mention of DVT or
blood clots, and no sense at all of just how lethal this condition can be.
You say you were being open about it in the early 1990s but I don't think you were mentioning deep vein
thrombosis at all.
FLOWER: We were mentioning circulatory problems.
DAVIES: That's a little bit different isn't it.
FLOWER: No it isn't.
DAVIES: Well there's a difference between circulatory problems and the potential for getting a fatal blood
clot.
FLOWER: No, I think what you must remember is that British Airways carries approximately 40 million
passengers a year from all over the world. English is not the mother tongue of many of our passengers, and
therefore what we have to write is language that is understandable to the majority of our passengers. People
understand the concept of circulation, sluggish and slow circulation and that is...
DAVIES: But you don't think they understand the language of a potentially fatal blood clot.
FLOWER: Passengers do understand that but that is...
DAVIES: So why didn't you write it?
FLOWER: Because there was no need to and it is confusing and alarmist to the passengers.
RUTH CHRISTOFFERSEN
Mother of Emma Christoffersen
I can't believe it. They are treating us like imbeciles. The mother tongue! People can't understand! What
about all the other safety issues they put out? They will not admit to DVT.
FLOWER: Perhaps with the benefit of hindsight we could have used the word blood clots. We didn't, we
chose the terminology that we did, using advice from people who are experts in communication and getting
to the majority of our passengers so that passengers will actually understand what we're writing.
DAVIES: The airlines didn't just fail to issue appropriate warnings. Their fear of frightening off paying
passengers also made them reluctant to help others explore the whole issue of flight related DVT. During
the 1990s a number of leading medical researchers asked the airlines to help them study deep vein
thrombosis. These are just five of them. One of the first to be turned down was a surgeon from Hawaii
whose work on DVT is widely respected within the medical community.
BO EKLOFF
Professor of Surgery
University of Hawaii
In 1992 I wrote to 56 airlines alerting them about our research findings on the risk of long haul flights with
blood clot in the legs. I got one response.
DAVIES: A few years later one of London's leading vascular surgeons tried to get two major airlines to
take an interest in his research.
KEVIN BURNAND
Professor of Vascular Surgery
St Thomas's Hospital, London
We were denied access to passengers by the first airline and the second did not bother to reply to our letter.
DAVIES: This man is Australia's leading authority on flying related DVT. He too was told access to
passengers would be impossible.
REGINALD LORD
Professor of Surgery
St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney
I think it was the collective judgment at the time that the risks related to inducing higher anxiety in
travellers would probably offset the potential benefits which might flow from such a study.
DAVIES: When another surgeon was refused help by an airline medical director, he asked that passengers
at least be warned.
MARK MALOUF
Vascular Surgeon
Sydney
His response to me was that legal advice to the company was that warning passengers was admitting legal
liability, and that they were in no position at all to warn even the at risk passengers about the problem.
DAVIES: And for this medic in Newcastle, the exercise also proved futile.
SAM SHUSTER
Emeritus Professor of Dermatology
Newcastle University
I went to some of the big airlines I 1996 with a project to study deep vein thrombosis and swelling of the
legs and the use of elastic stockings. Became pretty clear pretty soon I wasn't going to get any support.
DAVIES: One of the airlines which turned down Shuster was British Airways, and their letter to him hints
at an agenda which undermines the industry's boast that it treats passenger health as a top priority. One of
BA's medical chiefs, Doctor Michael Bagshaw, wrote that one of their difficulties was "We have to tread
carefully because, as a commercial organisation, we have no wish to imply that flying might be bad for
one's health!"
Why then did the Head of your Medical Department in 1996 turn down a request for help in researching
DVT by saying, and I quote "We have to tread carefully because as a commercial organisation we have no
wish to imply that flying might be bad for one's health!"?
FLOWER: That, I think, is a paraphrase of the terms used.
DAVIES: No, it's an exact transcription of the terms used.
FLOWER: I understand that what he is trying to convey is that there is.. the relationship between an airline
and its passenger is a means of conveyance from point A to point B, not to be a research subject.
DAVIES: As a commercial organisation do you feel in anyway compromised in terms of investigating
issues involving passenger health?
FLOWER: There is no compromise in investigating passenger health issues. As a physician I am bound by
the ethics of my profession, those ethics go above all commercial considerations.
DAVIES: Emma Christoffersen's death has had one other effect. People who lost relatives to DVT, some
of them many years ago, are now asking themselves could their deaths have been prevented? Steve
Whiting is a freelance cricket writer based in the Midlands. He and his daughter Becky have been
following the story of Emma Christoffersen particularly closely.
STEVE WHITING
When I heard the news of Emma Christoffersen dying it suddenly brought it all home to me really and I
suddenly thought well that must be what Ruth died of and I began to look into it more deeply because up
until then - and that was comparatively recently wasn't it - up until then I thought okay, Viv has died bless
her, let's get on with life.
DAVIES: His wife Viv, an Australian born model, died from a DVT after a long haul flight to Darwin in
1988. Steve is now having to face up to the fact that she might have died unnecessarily. He wants to know
exactly how long the airlines have know a problem existed.
WHITING: I know I lost a wife but Becky lost a mother who she never really knew. She was one year old
and I've had to bring her up and she's missed the advantages of having a loving mother around and I think
the airlines should be made to pay for that.
DAVIES: And for that reason Steve Whiting now wants the airlines called to account. He's considering
legal action and he's not alone. There is a growing number of people around the world who believe the
airlines have been negligent and should answer in the courts.
Sydney, Australia, capital of the long haul flight. Australians have to fly some of the longest distances in
the world when travelling overseas. The death of Emma Christoffersen hit the headlines here with dramatic
results. People began to realise that DVT had been something of an invisible epidemic in their midst for
decades.
SYDNEY LAWYER: We were contacted by a few people after the death of Emma Christoffersen at
Heathrow Airport in the UK last year.
DAVIES: Since Emma's death this Sydney lawyer has had a constant stream of new clients who've suffered
DVT's after flying. They want to sue the airlines for not warning them of the risk.
NICOLLE EDMONDS
I switched on my telly and it was the news and there's this story. This story about this girl that had flown
from Sydney to London and had died. So.. you know.. it was a shock. It was a huge shock. It could have
been me.
ANTHONY DONELLAN
He was a very good doctor. I asked him... I knew nothing about DVT but I was talking to him about it and I
said well how long has it been around for then? And he said well basically we learnt about them in medical
school, you know.. and he's known about them for the last 40 years which was a real shock to me.
BRENDAN SYDE
Lawyer, Slater & Gordon
The DVT claims however are something that have caught even us by surprise, starting from a couple of
inquiries from various members of the public like last year. The number and the rank of people contacting
us snowballed to the point where we had to put on extra staff just to deal with the telephone inquiries we
were getting from members of the public.
DAVIES: Over 2000 Australians have already taken legal advice about DVT. One of the latest potential
litigants is Dr Keiran Phadke. He suffered a near fatal DVT after a flight only two weeks ago.
Dr KEIRAN PHADKE
And about 48 hours later I was actually gardening and I got suddenly very acutely short of breath. I suffered
from a very fast pulse and felt very dizzy and my wife, who was with me in the garden, said I looked blue in
the phase.
LINDA PHADKE
Wife
I just first noticed his fingers going blue and then his face was blue, and I said to him what's the matter?
And he said I've got shortness of breath.
PHADKE: A clot in the leg may give you pain and discomfort but when you have clots in your lungs it's
quite devastating because you get this awful feeling that you might be choking whenever you try and do
something and very short of breath which is quite worrying.
SYDE: We believe that we've got a strong case against the airlines because the clients that have contacted
us because medical practitioners that we've spoken to and because of public comments that have been made
by various experts in the field indicate that airlines have known for some time about the nature of this
problem for reasons that are not entirely clear they seem to have adopted a policy of ignoring and hoping
it'll go away.
DAVIES: Emma Christoffersen's family back in the UK are now also joining forces with others seeking
redress. In London recently families assembled to demand a public inquiry. Nearly all have been in touch
with lawyers. They are confused and angry and they're still grieving.
RUTH CHRISTOFFERSEN: What cost do they put on a life, what cost do they put on our grief and
suffering? The evidence is mounting and we're asking the government do you not have a responsibility and
public duty to find out why people are dying from air related DVT?
DAVIES: But the family's chances of a successful legal action in the UK are remote. Their lawyers say an
airline is only liable for death or injury if there's been an accident, and that DVT isn't an accident. They
also say that the airlines have no legal duty in these circumstances to safeguard the health of their
passengers. On every plane there will be a number of passengers who are more at risk than others of
developing blood clots.
JOHN SCURR
Consultant Surgeon, Middlesex & Lister Hospitals
The most important risk categories for people flying is a past history of a blood clot. Somebody who has
heart or lung disease, somebody who has been treated for cancer, somebody who has had a recent surgical
operation.
DAVIES: Others at extra risk are women who are on hormone replacement therapy or taking the pill. The
link between the pill and thrombosis has already been well documented but there's another serious risk
factor which is not so easily identifiable. It's a blood clotting abnormality called factor five Lydon, and it
affects one in twenty of the population. Carriers of factor five will be roughly seven times more likely to
develop deep vein thrombosis. On a 260 seater plane like this, there will probably be about 15 people with
factor five deficiency. There will probably be women on this plane who are taking the pill. Each group has
a higher risk of getting a DVT. For those who fall into both categories the danger is about 30 times greater.
The fact that they're just about to get on a long-distance flight means that that risk is multiplied yet again.
SCURR: If you add factor five Lydon deficiency, taking the oral contraceptive pill, and then you sit still on
a flight for more than 8 hours, then the risk of developing a blood clot goes up very considerably.
DAVIES: Emma Christoffersen fell into at least two of these risk categories, she was on the pill and self
harm took a long haul flight. The tragedy is, when she stepped onto the plane home last September, Emma
had no idea she was at greater risk and nobody told her. But among the airline medics there is a school of
thought that the onus to get this information should be on the passenger and not the airline.
Dr LUTZ BERGAU
Medical Director, Lufthansa
The information is available to all those who had an operation, it's available to all those who take pills and
who smoke. The information for many other risk factors is available for passengers, they just have to ask
their doctors. They just have to look at their own history and then they know what to do.. they should know
what to do. The very moment they enter a plane they should be informed by their doctors or having
informed themselves.
BELSTEAD: (laughing) Sorry. Ohhh I think it is totally specious to argue that people have a
responsibility to inform themselves. Those of us who work in the professions, we are in a position where
we learn about this as a matter of our day to day work. If you are somebody getting on an aircraft who
doesn't have a lot of contact with the medical profession for anything, I do not know how you can be
expected to find out the information for yourself because you don't even know that the information is there
to be found.
Virgin Atlantic advert
Right then. I shall now demonstrate the extraordinary leg room in this business class.
DAVIES: The condition has been called 'economy class syndrome' but it's something of a misnomer.
Although most cases do involve those travelling in economy class, business and first class passengers have
also developed DVTs from sitting still for too long.
KLM & Northwest Airlines advert
Define comfort
Air Canada advert
JMC in-flight video
Hi gang, so you're off on your journey and I've joined this flight because I want to give you a few tips on
how you can have a real good journey and arrive at the other end feeling so good.
DAVIES: Some airlines have finally been responding to the issue of DVT. They're now showing videos on
the subject and the word 'thrombosis' is in their literature for the first time. British Airways have also given
some support to a DVT study finished last year. But the industry is still extremely nervous about this whole
issue. We approached 30 airlines asking to film on board a long haul flight. Only one, the Brazilian Airline
Varig, would give us access. The advice given on how to prevent a DVT is actually very simple. Take an
occasional walk up and down the aisle, make sure you exercise your calf muscles by raising the toes up and
down, don't drink too much alcohol and drink plenty of water. These graduated elastic stockings are also
thought to help. It's all very simple. The tragedy of this whole story is that after half a century of warnings
and deaths, it took the death of this young woman to force the airlines simply to admit there was a problem
and advise passengers about it.
RUTH CHRISTOFFERSEN
Mother of Emma Christoffersen
If she hadn't have gone on that aeroplane she would be with us today. The questions could have been raised
and the issues could have been dealt with, but they chose to do nothing and Emma died.
DAVIES: When Emma's luggage was brought back from Heathrow last year her fiancÚ, Tim, found a video
and a diary at the top of her case.
TIM STUART: [Reading from Emma's diary] The sensation I had was fantastic. I was flying as free as a
bird. It was so peaceful up there. It was the first time in my life I thought I was going to burst with
excitement. It is not every day you can see your own shadow on top of a cloud.
_________
If you would like more Information about the issues Raised in the programme
you can call the BBC Action Line free on
08000 934 934
Lines are open until Midnight every day.
The textphone number is
08000 153 350
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12
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